Kurdistan

Kurdistan, Arabic Kurdistān, PersianKordestān, broadly defined geographic region traditionally inhabited mainly by Kurds. It consists of an extensive plateau and mountain area, spread over large parts of what are now eastern Turkey, northern Iraq, and western Iran and smaller parts of northern Syria and Armenia. Two of these countries officially recognize internal entities by this name: Iran’s northwestern province of Kordestān and Iraq’s Kurdish autonomous region.

The Kurdistan (“Land of the Kurds”) designation refers to an area of Kurdish settlement that roughly includes the mountain systems of the Zagros and the eastern extension of the Taurus. Since ancient times the area has been the home of the Kurds, a people whose ethnic origins are uncertain. For 600 years after the Arab conquest and their conversion to Islam, the Kurds played a recognizable and considerable part in the troubled history of western Asia—but as tribes, individuals, or turbulent groups rather than as a people.

KurdsKurds from the Jaff tribe cheering as they watch a horse race during the annual festival of their tribe, south of Al-Sulaymāniyyah, Iraq.Shawan Mohammed—AFP/Getty Images

Among the petty Kurdish dynasties that arose during this period the most important were the Shaddādids, ruling a predominantly Armenianpopulation in the Ānī and Ganja districts of Transcaucasia (951–1174); the Marwānids of Diyarbakir (990–1096); the Ḥasanwayhids of the Kermānshāh region (c. 961–1015); and the ʿAnnazids (c. 990/91–1117), who initially ruled from Ḥulwān. Less is written of the Kurds under the Mongols and Turkmen, but they again became prominent in the wars between the Ottoman Empire and the Ṣafavid dynasty. Several Kurdish principalities developed and survived into the first half of the 19th century, notably those of Bohtān, Hakari, Bahdinan, Soran, and Baban in Turkey and of Mukri and Ardelan in Persia. But Kurdistan, though it played a considerable part in the history of western Asia, never enjoyed political unity.

With the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after World War I (1914–18), and particularly with the encouragement of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson—one of whose Fourteen Pointsstipulated that the non-Turkish nationalities of the Ottoman Empire should be “assured of an absolute unmolested opportunity of autonomous development”—Kurdish nationalists looked to the eventual establishment of a Kurdistani state.

The Treaty of Sèvres, signed in 1920 by representatives of the Allies and of the Ottoman sultan, provided for the recognition of the three Arab states of Hejaz, Syria, and Iraq and of Armenia and, to the south of it, Kurdistan, which the Kurds of the Mosulvilāyet (province), then under British occupation, would have the right to join. Owing to the military revival of Turkey under Kemal Atatürk, this treaty was never ratified. It was superseded in 1923 by the Treaty of Lausanne, which confirmed the provision for the Arab states but omitted mention of Armenia and Kurdistan. Mosul was excluded from the settlement, and the question of its future was referred to the League of Nations, which in 1925 awarded it to Iraq. This decision was made effective by the Treaty of Ankara, signed in 1926 by Turkey, Iraq, and Great Britain.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Noah Tesch, Associate Editor.